Hitler's Girl: The British Aristocracy and the Third Reich on the Eve of WWII

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A timely, riveting book that presents for the first time an alternative history of 1930s Britain, revealing how prominent fascist sympathizers nearly succeeded in overturning British democracyusing the past as a road map to navigate the complexities of todays turn toward authoritarianism.

Hitlers Girl is a groundbreaking history that reveals how, in the 1930s, authoritarianism nearly took hold in Great Britain as it did in Italy and Germany. Drawing on recently declassified intelligence files, Lauren Young details the pervasiveness of Nazi sympathies among the British aristocracy, as significant factions of the upper class methodically pursued an actively pro-German agenda. She reveals how these aristocrats formed a murky Fifth Column to Nazi Germany, which depended on the complacence and complicity of the English to topple its proud and long-standing democratic traditionand very nearly succeeded.

As she highlights the parallels to our similarly treacherous time, Young exposes the involvement of secret organizations like the Right Club, which counted the Duke of Wellington among its influential members; the Cliveden Set, which ran a shadow foreign policy in support of Hitler; and the shocking four-year affair between socialite Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler.

Eye-opening and instructive, Hitlers Girl re-evaluates 1930s England to help us understand our own vulnerabilities and poses urgent questions we must face to protect our freedom. At what point does complacency become complicity, posing real risk to the democratic norms that we take for granted Will democracy again succeedand will it require a similarly cataclysmic event like World War II to ensure its survival Will we, in our own defining moment, stand up for democratic valuesor will we succumb to political extremism

Author Bio

Dr. Lauren Young is an American academic and Policy Consultant specializing in security and defense issues. Dr. Young has previously taught at the London School of Economics in the Department of International History where she won several university-wide teaching awards. She also advises on policy issues and attends World Economic Forum events at Davos, Geneva and New York City on behalf of her clients. Dr. Young has been a contributor to the LSE Book Review and reviews manuscripts for the UCLA Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence. Dr. Young has also worked at the US Department of State at the US Mission to the United Nations and the US Embassy in London as a Political Advisor on issues including Nuclear Non-Proliferation, International Peace and Security and Cyber Security. Dr. Young is a Trustee at the National Committee of American Foreign Policy and a Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London. She sits on the Advisory Board of the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, the Yale Development Council and the Yale Parents Leadership Council. She holds a B.A. from Yale University, M.A. from The Courtauld Institute, London and MPhil/PhD from King's College, University of London.